Saturday, December 26, 2015

.45mm or .9mm? That’s the
existential debate pondered by Samuel L. Jackson’s smooth-talking, samurai-coiffed,
sub-sociopathic minor league arms dealer Ordell Robbie in the first
post-credits scene of Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie
Brown. Whilst pontificating to his newly sprung from the pokey partner
Louis Gara (Robert De Niro) on the relative merits of the industrial strength
firearms on display in Chicks Who Love
Guns (the hilarious infomercial spoof that feels like a Jim Wynorski
b-reel, all bikini-clad, bosom-heavy beauties on display), he laments that as
soon as a film popularizes a certain type of gun, all of his prime street
customers become obsessed with owning one, no matter the quality or drawbacks.
In particular, he namechecks John Woo’s The
Killer, and how since it other Hong Kong gangster films of its ilk made
their domestic bows, everyone wants to own a .45 (despite his advice that a
.9mm jams far less.)

As an opening salvo for two of
the film’s main characters, it’s a goofy bit of comedic jesting, a callback to
the Jackson-John Travolta bull session at the opening of Pulp Fiction, and a self-referential stab at the romanticism of
violence and pop culture junkiedom that lie at the heart of Tarantino’s film
(and which are often the main criticisms lobbed his way.) But this smidge of
dialogue also provides some key context for the time that helped to spawn this
2.5 hour character study of a crime drama. In the grand scheme of Tarantino’s
filmic oeuvre, Jackie Brown stands as
an intriguing sidebar, one which provides a glimpse into an alternate direction
in which his career might have progressed.

As QT was directing Pulp Fiction (which captured so much of
the post-modern, ironic GenX sensibility that was becoming a standard in the
early ‘90s), another wildly influential cultural marker was embedding itself on
the pop consciousness. For a period in the first half of the decade, the
nascent Hong Kong Action genre was the hottest thing going in the then-potent
U.S. underground film scene. Magazines like Film
Threat devoted copious space to chronicling the transgressive thrills in
films that, in a pre-internet era, were hard to see outside of bootleg VHS
tapes. Art houses across the country hosted retrospectives featuring recent wire
work epics and hyper-violent bullet ballets.

At the heart of this genre
explosion was John Woo, the superstar director of A Better Tomorrow, Hard
Boiled, and the aforementioned The
Killer. His crime sagas were a reinvention of the noir cycle on par with
the French New Wave tough guys films of Jean-Pierre Melville, with impossibly
cool leading men (particularly the iconic Chow Yun Fat) blazing their way
through a morally conflicted world awash with cigarette smoke and dual pistol
standoffs. And doves. Lots of doves. Woo was an arch-stylist through and
through, and the neon lighting, atmospheric shafts of light, and symbolic birds
of freedom that populated his landscapes brought a poetic weight to the
proceedings.

Ironically, by the time Woo’s
films gained greater exposure in the States, the Triad film genre was already
in decline, slowly being replaced by another wave of wire work films. But they
still seemed radical and fresh to domestic audiences. The hip hop world, in
particular, latched onto the genre in a massive way, aping the stoic, badass
signifiers of Woo and company in their style and lyrics. The most notable
purveyors of this influence were the rap superstar collective The Wu-Tang Clan,
who took their moniker from a 1983 Gordon Liu action film and peppered their
tracks with samples and soundbites from the burgeoning Honk Kong filmic arena.

Always the inveterate, voracious
cinephile, Tarantino had latched onto this Asian New Wave early on, a fandom
that was bolstered by the access he enjoyed during his tenure at the famed
Video Archives. You can see some of the classic Hong Kong cinema themes at play
in his first two films: loyalty, respect, the codes by which warriors live, the
ritualization of violence. And as was becoming evident by this point in his
career, he also held a deep appreciation for black culture, especially the Blaxploitation
genre so popular in ‘70s grindhouses. Jackie
Brown would see the fullest realization to date of QT’s affinity for this
dual cultural imperative in its loose, weed-infused mood.

And it would see this realization
through his adaptation of Elmore Leonard, the poet laureate of Detroit crime
fiction, whose hard-boiled books are populated by the kind of eccentric
criminals, wild card elements, and an intense love of language that seem right
at home in the Tarantinoverse. In Leonard’s Rum
Punch, QT saw the same talky crooks that lent his previous two films their
dark, vital heart. But he also saw something more, the chance to build a
narrative around two decidedly more non-criminal types floating around this
world of thieves, both trying to make their way to a better life. And he saw
the chance to resurrect the careers of two of his favorite actors.

If John Travolta often served as
the young Tarantino’s avatar of cool, then Blaxploitation queen Pam Grier was
his inspiration, his crush, and his template for femininity. Since her ‘70s
heyday, Grier had never really gone away, but she was a long way from her most
famous roles in Foxy Brown, Coffy, Black Mama, White Mama,
et al. Much like Richard Roundtree, she had been pigeonholed as a sub-genre
action star, which ignored the authoritative presence, knowing wit, and emotional
depth that she often brought to roles. Being able to use his newfound Hollywood
clout to make his next film a Grier vehicle was a dream come true for QT. Once
again, the lazy narrative might have pegged this as nostalgic stunt casting,
but like Travolta’s turn in Pulp,
this was a case where a somewhat forgotten star was the perfect choice for the
character. Unfortunately, Grier’s career didn’t match the resurgence that came
to Travolta; Hollywood tends to marginalize women over 40…or, these days, over
30. Nonetheless, her work in this film is tremendous. Uma Thurman may have
electrified Pulp, but it was still very much a man’s man’s man’s world. Grier’s
Jackie is still beset by the wills and whims of the male-dominated war between
cops and criminals, but she more than holds her own, ultimately outsmarting all
of them to deliver herself from the middle-aged morass of her flight stewardess
life. She’s the first truly alpha-female presence in a Tarantino film, and it
can be argued that after two features in which men must rely on their
resourcefulness to find redemption, Jackie
Brown finds a similar crew of men helpless before the titular female.

One of those men who ultimately
finds himself in thrall to Jackie’s charms is career bail bondsman Max Cherry,
played with stoic aplomb by Robert Forster. Another favorite of Tarantino’s
youth, Forster was the very definition of a working actor, gaining some
notability in Disney’s space epic The
Black Hole and the sewer horror thriller Alligator, but otherwise never reaching even the temporary level of
fame that Grier achieved. The budding romance between Max and Jackie forms the
tender heart of this film; looking back at it today, the casting of two
middle-aged actors in these roles in a Tarantino film seems positively
subversive. Forster doesn’t carry the pyrotechnic presence of Pulp’s leading men, but Max requires an
actor who can wear the weight of the years in far subtler fashion. And this is
where Forster excels, communicating a world-weary humor and sadness throughout,
his furrowed brow indicative of a life spent witnessing all manner of
malfeasance, his deep stare a well of regret for the life he might have had.

From a purely objective
standpoint, Samuel L. Jackson and Robert De Niro are the two megastars in this
film, even though they’re supporting players to the Jackie/Max story. Both
actors give some of the finest performances of their careers, playing against
type in fascinating ways. De Niro’s Louis is all comedic shrugs and bemused
reactions, a man lost in the real world after four years in the clink. But that
confused stoner demeanor hides a raging frustration that finally explodes when
he kills Bridget Fonda’s Melanie in a fit of rage after the money exchange at
the Del Amo Fashion Place. It’s a shocking bit of violence to this day, made
all the more powerful by the relatively monotone character build that comes
before. It’s also a deeply troubling moment that forces the audience to
question whether they should laugh or gasp. That dynamic was at play with much
of Jackson’s role as Jules in Pulp
Fiction, and the same feeling permeates his role here as well. That opening
discussion of guns and their cultural cache always elicits laughs from an
audience, but while Jules is ultimately revealed to be a morally motivated
person who has spent a lifetime putting on malevolent airs to serve as the
tyranny of evil men, Ordell is a stone cold psychopath who wears a mask of
conviviality to lure in his victims. In the film’s climactic scene, in which
Ordell threatens Max before their meeting with Jackie, the look in Jackson’s
eyes is pure cold, calculating menace, a moral vacuum at the heart of the plot.

Watching Jackie Brown today is as interesting an experience as it was back
in 1997. I remember seeing it several days after its Christmas Day release,
loving the laid back nature of the plot and the deeply ‘70s haze in which it
seemed to dwell (even though it’s set in the present day.) Of course, the film
was a financial disappointment, and pundits saw it as either a step back for
the boy wonder director or a comeuppance for his sudden mega-stardom. Seen in
the context of his subsequent films, it’s somewhat of an odd duck, an almost
total retreat into the extended conversational world that his previous films
used as backdrop, which creates an overall effect that at times can seem almost
too relaxed. But by the time all is resolved in the final scene, and Jackie and
Max part after a poignant kiss, the collective power of the film really comes
together. We, the audience, have lived with these people for several hours, and
what in the moment might have seemed like minor and incidental details are now
revealed as building blocks in a relationship that is unusually mature, not
just for a crime film but for a major Hollywood product. There’s no melodrama
in their parting, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t get a bit choked up as Max
retreats into the soft focus of the scene’s background (and into his barely
concealed tears) and as the camera focuses on Jackie’s face as she drives away
into her new life, Grier singing along to Bobby Womack’s “Across 110th
Street” (which also opens the film) with a twinge of sadness over leaving one
of the only people in her life who seems to have truly gotten her.

Despite its financial failings, Jackie Brown allowed Tarantino to expand
his dramatic chops in ways that are still interesting. He would hang onto the
narrative of a strong woman beset by grief and regret, using it as a launching
point for his next project, a massive film that would serve as a summation of
his entire career, nay his entire life to this point. It would be five full
years before another QT film would hit theaters, but Kill Bill would prove to be more than worth the wait.

Friday, December 25, 2015

Sometimes a film comes along that
becomes more than merely popular, that stamps its imprint so distinctly on the
collective cultural consciousness as to become part and parcel of the lingua
franca, an almost subconscious connective bond in the social tapestry. The
advent of the mass media hurried along this process. Once a film could be
viewed again and again on television and video, it became easier for it to
achieve such a totemic status. It’s why The
Godfather remains so ubiquitous in the mass parlance, even amongst those
who have never actually sat down and watched Michael Corleone’s descent into
darkness (granted, its wry commentary on the American Dream also helps, but
hey…) It’s why the Will Ferrell empire of laughs has managed to colonize minds
of all ages: Anchorman is a great
party film, but it also works as a loosely connected series of clips that can
be shared virally.

In 1994, Pulp Fiction became this
type of film. And Quentin Tarantino became this
type of director. “And nothing was ever the same” is one of the hoariest
clichés imaginable. But truly, post-Pulp
Fiction, nothing was ever the same.

As I mentioned in my essay on Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino’s ascent
occurred at a precipitous time for the indie and art film world. Throughout the
‘80s, the influence of the Jarmusches and the Hayneses and the Wenderses of the
art house realm had been bubbling under the surface of a mainstream film scene
increasingly dominated by empty action epics and slick, sanitized dramas and
comedies, a reflection of the go-go Reaganomics bubble. Spike Lee was arguably
one of the first directors to transcend the indie milieu with Do the Right Thing, a righteous, morally
complex, smart bomb of a film that confronted a fairly wide audience with its
own deeply held prejudices. It took an ace provocateur and cinephile like Lee
to blaze such a path. Five years later, an equally passionate cinephile and
provocateur (and future sparring partner in the press) would torch that path,
breaking it wide open for better and for worse. Time may have bestowed more
enduring respectability on Lee’s film, but Quentin Tarantino’s raucous, ribald
coming out party is, in many ways, just as a deep of a morality tale. It just
came dressed up as the ultimate explosion of the culture junkie instinct.

For as transcendent as Pulp Fiction has become over the ensuing
two decades, for as easy as “Royale with Cheese” can still effortlessly spill
from so many lips, for as archetypical as wise-cracking criminals whose
conversations are peppered with cultural ephemera have become, it has to be
difficult for a first time viewer in 2015 (especially a viewer who wasn’t a
teenager or older when the film was released) to fully appreciate how strange
and radical it felt like in 1994. A huge part of that galvanizing sense was
borne of a ‘70s revival that was reaching its peak, right at the time when
post-modernism and irony were becoming forever entwined in the cultural DNA.
Seeing Pulp for the first time today,
its arch-ironic ‘70s references can seem a little goofy and dated, but at the
time such winking humor felt fresh and vital (if you were a teen, as I was at
the time, it felt like you were the first generation to experience such an
ironic embrace of the past.) In the ensuing years since 1994, the acceleration
of the mass media has mainstreamed irony and sarcasm to such a degree that
their effect is almost anodyne. But back then, such markers were reaching a
crest with Nirvana’s repackaging of ‘70s metal and punk as rebuke of the ‘80s
pop excesses and the rise of a pseudo-alternative counterculture that aped that
same sense of appropriation, a pop-psychology ideal for a generation still
trapped in the shadow of Woodstock and the ‘60s. (It’s no coincidence that even
though the 1994 Woodstock revival tried to emulate the peace and love ethos of
1969, the breakout stars of the weekend were Trent Reznor’s Nine Inch Nails,
sonic collage terrorists whose newest album was recorded in Sharon Tate’s
Hollywood Hills home, the site of the true landmark counterculture event of
’69.)

To those who grew up in the ‘70s,
or were at least touched by its influence, Quentin Tarantino felt like an
avatar of a mass experience, a conjuring of all the weird, seemingly mundane
obsessions that populated their subconscious. He simultaneously provided a
dream scenario in which a movie obsessive could become a self-taught superstar
(even though he went out of his way to dispel that myth) and offered safe haven
for the most unkempt aspects of the burgeoning geek culture that would overtake
pop culture in the 21st century. Today, QT is almost an old master,
but in 1994 his hyper-nerdy demeanor stood in stark contrast to a pop culture
universe that still venerated the jock-geek dichotomy.

And what he brought forth from
the ‘70s was also refreshing and radical. His references to the cultural junk
of his youth, his veneration of character actors from that decade…they seemed
not like attempts at hipsterdom, but as loving evangelism for lost artifacts.
The most notable of his achievements in this milieu, of course, was the
resurrection of John Travolta’s career. At the time, it was generally accepted
than an actor of Travolta’s caliber was doomed to never again reach the height
of his faded Danny Zuko/Tony Manero fame. His descent into relative mediocrity
was just how things went. But Brian De Palma fanatic QT knew better; the easy
narrative around Travolta in Pulp is
that he’s part of the wax museum with a pulse that Vincent Vega refers to, but
Tarantino knew his legit dramatic chops from films like Blow Out, knew that at his best he was an actor who could be suave,
funny, and moving all in the same breath. Travolta’s renaissance proved to be
relatively short-lived, but in the moment it was quite the big deal.

Of course, bringing a ‘70s icon
back from the grave isn’t the only reason that what Tarantino achieved in Pulp Fiction seemed so fresh. It’s
fairly standard practice now, but an A-list actor like Bruce Willis taking a
massive pay cut to work on an indie film like this was a much rarer concept in 1994.
Modern fans accustomed to a relatively humorless Willis might forget, but his
breakout role as Moonlighting’s David
Addison drew its power from the breezy humor and rakishness that he brought to
the proceedings. His subsequent ‘80s action star career tapped into this humor,
but in increasingly brutish ways. QT saw the Ralph Meeker of Kiss Me Deadly in Willis’s tough guy
posturing/bullying, and the way that his script and direction channel the
actor’s prickly tendencies while also infusing them with a weight and gravitas
is still moving to this day. Butch Coolidge stands aside 12 Monkeys’ James Cole as Willis’s best roles, and it should be no
surprise that two filmic alchemists like Tarantino and Terry Gilliam helmed
these high water marks for the actor.

But even beyond the
Travolta/Willis reinventions, Pulp
Fiction marks the film in which Tarantino found the two actors who would
serve as his muses and prime channelers of his aesthetic. Uma Thurman’s pre-Pulp career was a scattershot series of
turns in a mish mash of genres, but none of those roles managed to capture the
inherent vitality that she displays in this film. Every time I watch it, I’m
immediately floored by just how electric she is as Mia Wallace, her portrayal a
keenly observed send-up of the femme fatale archetype as coked-up seductress
delivering rat-a-tat dialogue. Her spontaneous dance to Urge Overkill’s cover
of “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” is still one of the high points of the film.
On second viewing, a viewer knows that she’s dancing on the edge of the
disaster of her accidental OD, but the way that Tarantino stays with the
totality of her wild abandon to the song is still exhilarating. It’s a
testament to the power of Thurman’s performance that she’s only a significant
presence in 20 minutes of the run time, and yet the energy she brings to the
proceedings can be felt long after she’s been reduced to a cameo in Bruce
Willis’s segment.

And then there’s Samuel L.
Jackson. This was the film that turned a struggling actor and recovering addict
who had shown flashes of brilliance throughout his career as a supporting
player (including a memorable turn as Mister Senor Love Daddy in Do the Right Thing!) into SAMUEL L.
JACKSON the larger than life charisma machine. In an era in which the star
system of old appears to be dead, Jackson still makes great hay out of
portraying embellishments on his own gregarious personality, and at his best he
manages to fuse that star quality with genuine dramatic power. And is there a
better combination of writer and actor in this era than Jackson and Tarantino?
Even with the ablest of interpreters, the subtle nuances of QT’s motormouth
dialogue (Mamet on trucker speed as I put it in my Reservoir Dogs essay) can be hard to fully capture. But Jackson
understands the natural, giddy delight in language that his scripts, the arch
bravado they require, and the almost mythological power that they tap into.

It’s that mythological aspect
that forms the spine of Jackson’s Jules Winnfield, and that informs so much of
the aforementioned morality tale at the heart of Pulp Fiction. Loyalty has always been a major theme in Tarantino’s
oeuvre, and Pulp plays that focus to
the hilt. Vincent Vega explicitly questions his own loyalty to Marsellus
Wallace when tempted to romance Mia after their date, and the way that his
story plays with the noir conventions of the monolithic heavy, the moll’s
wife/femme fatale, and the good soldier gives things the feeling of an age old
cycle being played out once again. Butch’s struggle to escape his downtrodden
life requires his betrayal of Marsellus (after being tempted to betray the
ethics of his ancestry), and it’s during his struggle to finish that escape
that he essentially becomes a Theseus figure, drawn deeper and deeper into the
labyrinth of his deceit until he must face the Minotaur in Maynard’s torture
dungeon. Now whether said Minotaur is Marsellus, Zed, Maynard, or The Gimp is
up for debate. But it’s only through that deepest of physical and ethical
descents that Butch can overcome his predicament.

In some ways, Jules’s journey is the most mythological, or at least the most
religious-oriented, a revelatory rededication to something much greater than
himself. Jackson’s initial reading of the Ezekiel 25:17 speech remains one of
the most lauded passages of the film, but often the focus of viewers is on the
comedic aspects of the scene. But here again lies the complex brilliance of
Tarantino on display. Go back and rewatch this pivotal scene between Jackson
and Frank Whaley…with the sound off. What plays as thrilling and highly
theatrical with sound is uncomfortable and terrifying without it, Andrzej
Sekula’s framing all tight close-ups and low angles, Whaley’s face a mask of
sheer terror, and Jackson’s eyes gleaming with the malicious intent of a man
possessed by either total purpose or total commitment to a role…or both. As
Jules notes to Vincent before they enter Brett’s apartment, “Let’s get into
character.” Playing the part of the thugs is integral to these men’s existence,
from their icy demeanors to their spartan tough guy suits.

It’s only at the film’s
conclusion that this performative drive comes full circle, and it’s here that
the power Jackson can bring to a role comes out in full force. As he repeats
the Ezekiel 25:17 quote to a captive Tim Roth, Jules is finally forced to come
to terms with the real meaning of the verse, and with his true role as the
tyranny of evil men. As the years pass, this scene gains more and more weight
for me. Pulp Fiction is such a wild,
profane, breezy ride, but in the end its concerns are focused on the
possibility of redemption. Most of the characters either escape with a modicum
of redemption in their lives or end up dead, but Jules is the one person who
must come to terms with the horror with which he has been complicit. As Jackson
runs himself down to Roth in a measured, even patter, the total effect is both
devastating and galvanizing, a refutation of the sexiness of evil that is too
often the only takeaway that some have from Tarantino’s films.

Even moreso than the moments of
high drama and bombast that make up Pulp
Fiction, it’s the quieter and more subdued passages that really define the
film and establish its foundation. Because once again, as in Reservoir Dogs, this is a film about
people who love to talk. For all its reputation as a violent gangland comedy,
it’s striking to watch Pulp today and
remember how much of its running time is composed of extended conversations. Vincent
and Mia’s famed dinner at Jack Rabbit Slim’s is a measured study in the
seductive allure of opening oneself up to the improvisational vulnerability of
a one on one confab. Jules and Vincent talk so much about the politics of the
foot rub that they almost cost themselves their lives (what would’ve happened
if they hadn’t dawdled in the hallway for a few minutes?) In what amounts to
her only scene, the lovely Maria de Medeiros (Thurman’s co-star in Henry and June) lends tenderness to her
relationship with Wills via a goofy conversation about the pleasures of the
potbelly. In Tarantino’s world, language is a vital part of existence, as
essential as the coffee these characters mainline and the plots they hatch to
preserve their livelihoods.

Indeed, Tarantino continues to
establish a key thread from his first feature, that of the power of the
character as storyteller. Amidst all of Dogs’s
tough guy banter, it’s Tim Roth’s Mr. Orange who works the magic of deception
through his skill with the extended tale of his alter ego. The power of the
storyteller runs rampant through the eccentric assemblage of lovers, buggers,
and thieves in Pulp Fiction. In the
famous opening diner scene, Roth convinces the sublime Amanda Plummer (another
livewire performer in this excellent ensemble, albeit one who never got her
full due in Hollywood) to rob the join by spinning an extended tale of the inefficiencies
of robbing liquor stores. Willis’s character trajectory is propelled by
memories of Christopher Walken laying out the tale of his family watch’s
legacy, an almost mythological line of duty and loyalty encapsulated in a gold
pocket piece. Harvey Keitel’s Winston Wolf delivers Jules and Vincent from doom
by spinning what amounts to an extended tale/plan of the right way to do
things. And Jackson’s show stopping climactic moment of revelation is filtered
through the Road to Damascus story that he tells Roth at gunpoint. Tarantino
would bring the storyteller’s power to even greater realization later in his
career….but more on that eventually.

The smash success of Pulp Fiction, which at the time became
the most successful independent film of all time, transformed Miramax Films
(recently acquired by Disney) into a major new power in mainstream Hollywood.
Harvey and Bob Weinstein were now the studio moguls they always dreamed of
being, and Harvey’s aggressive, bullying promotional moxie came to dominate
awards season for years to come. But this newly gained renown came with quite
the price. I worked at a local art house during Miramax’s purple patch, so I
witnessed the formerly plucky indie become slightly bloated, manufacturing
instant prestige pix that too often came across as almost cartoonish in their
pre-fab sincerity and manufactured gravitas (a great irony, considering that Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction were such iconoclastic raspberries to some of the more
po-faced tendencies of the ‘80s art film world.) In similar fashion to the
Seattle music scene of the early ‘90s, once Miramax broke through, every major
studio wanted a piece of the suddenly hot indie film scene. And much like the
decline of the so-called ‘90s Alternative Rock era, once the studios got their hands
on smaller film distributors their output began to suffer, and the creative
wiggle room they had as independent entities disappeared. Today, most of those
studios have either been completely subsumed into the major studio maw, or are
altogether dead. To a certain extent, the internet has democratized great
swaths of indie film distribution, but without a strong network of smaller film
companies and indie theaters, it’s much harder for a little film to build word
of mouth, or to gain traction in the rapid pace of the modern cultural
conversation.

Quentin Tarantino broke such new
ground for the possibilities of indie authorship, yet he also paved the way for
a slew of imitators who threatened to turn much of the non-prestige art film
scene into a ghetto for second-rate gangland pictures. With a Best Original
Screenplay Oscar under his belt, he plowed through 1995 as a certifiable
celebrity, a pre-figuration of the demythification of fame that reality
television would soon usher forth in full force. But as with any artist who
produces a work that hits so big in so many ways, the inevitable question about
his career became how he could follow up this landmark film. In the short term,
he realized his youthful dreams by having several of his old screenplays
produced by other directors (From Dusk ‘Til
Dawn is a notable example, and one in which Tarantino got to indulge his
acting jones again.) And he became that
guy, a near-ubiquitous public figure in the style of an old Tonight Show regular…sometimes to his
own detriment (his segment of the much-derided anthology film Four Rooms comes across simultaneously
as self-satire and excessive self-parody.) But eventually, he would turn in a
completely different direction for his next project, a near-complete retreat
into the quiet conversational moments that had come to populate large swaths of
Pulp Fiction. For the first and only
time in his career, he would consciously adapt the work of another author. The
result remains a fascinating sidebar in his career, a film that says as much
about its time as Pulp Fiction does
about the mid-‘90s. But Jackie Brown
warrants an essay all its own.

Let’s get that out of the way
first of all. Would that he possessed such interdimensional powers as to
transcend the boundaries of time and space in order to molest all that encompassed
my formative years. And I’ve never held my youth so close to my chest as to
allow a scenario in which Lucas could come along and snatch it away like so
much day old candy.

But maybe I’m getting ahead of
myself.

On May 25th, 1983, my
mom pulled me out of school early so that we could venture to the General
Cinemas Great Western Twin. As a child, it was one of my favorite places to see
a movie, a single screener that had been split in half, but which still
possessed the sprawling, high-ceilinged lobby so common to ‘60s and ‘70s
theaters. I still have fond memories of those tall, thin windows in the foyer,
which let in just enough natural daytime light to endow the earth-toned
interior design with a golden hue, a visual palate that perfectly complemented
the warm fragrance of popcorn wafting through the air. Or maybe I’m juxtaposing
these images with my memory of the dear, departed Drexel North….but more on
that Proustian detour on another day, in another essay.

The reason for our afternoon
sojourn, of course, was to see Return of
the Jedi, which at the time was about the hottest ticket around for a 6
year-old, let alone the general movie-going population. It’s strange thinking
back to those days, and to the massive influence that the Star Wars franchise held over an entire generation of young people
(I was just on the tail end of that influence.) I know that I saw the first
film in a theater, probably in one of its reissues, and I definitely saw it a
few times on television. And I have confirmation that our family saw The Empire Strikes Back theatrically.
More importantly, I knew the mythos backwards and forwards. It was hard not to
when I owned so many of the action figures, the coloring books, the die cast
collectible figures, the records that featured long snatches of the dialogue,
etc.

But even though the marketing
force was strong in my head, I still have a hard time cultivating solid
memories of seeing those first two films in person. Which makes the trip to see
Jedi so interesting: because I knew
the storylines so well that my recall of the five times we saw this entry in
theaters is still vivid. And how couldn’t it be? When you’re an impressionable,
imaginative 6 year-old, the fate of carbon-frozen Han Solo and the prospect of
Luke Skywalker garbed in black (a pretty badass notion for any young male) and
hellbent on revenge can hold a powerful sway over all sections of your
consciousness. No matter the specifics of a young person’s recollections, the Star Wars universe was so heavily draped
over ours as to form a secret parallel existence, one which you always felt and
could just barely see if you looked in the right direction…or if the flickering
projector light caught your eye in between frames.

It’s also odd thinking back to
that General Cinemas Twin because reading the scattered online writings about
its existence (I’ve never found any pictures) gives me the distinct impression
that it was a decidedly non-spectacular venue, positively cookie cutter
according to several sources. And despite my childhood enthusiasm for Jedi and all things Star Wars, when I saw that third film again some 19 years later…it
was okay. All those criticisms that even the long-time fans had for it? Yeah,
most of them held true.

And that was perfectly fine. I
didn’t mind. Star Wars would always
hold a special place in forming the person I became, but I was also comfortable
leaving it alone as a trilogy of films that came to have a major impact on its
era. Although I always found the concept of a sequel to Jedi to be marginally interesting, I never harbored a deep,
all-consuming desire for a new film to come along and renew my faith in cinema,
life, righteous fury, and the ability of a legion of furry bear warriors to
topple an empire. So when Lucas announced the filming of the now-infamous
prequels, and when I saw that first theatrical trailer for The Phantom Menace (in front of, appropriately enough, The Corrupter) my reaction was just
about the definition of agnostic. And I know full well that, in many ways, I
was the exception.

To talk about Star Wars: The Force Awakens is of
course, to talk about the undying phenomenon that George Lucas wrought and the
fandom that still surrounds it. I’m a
firm believer that when you boil it all down, a film can usually be separated
from the sociological conditions surrounding it. To tip my hat to Bret Easton
Ellis, aesthetics and ideology don’t always have to intermingle. But the
relentless fervor that has surrounded the Star
Wars universe since 1977 makes the proposition of this new film, this entry
that (as the throng dutifully recites) finally honors what is considered to be
sacred about those previous texts, a case study for how sometimes the work and
the context are one in the same. And for the sleek, seductive power of our
collective memory palace can serve as both haven and trap (sez Admiral Ackbar.)

I know quite a few people who
uttered that infamous line about Lucas raping their childhood when The Phantom Menace made its bow in 1999.
I wasn’t even that interested in seeing it; after all, who really wanted to watch
three prequels to a story that had already filled in many of those narrative
blanks? Although Star Wars would
always occupy a cozy space in my past, I had since discovered the
claustrophobic space terror of Alien
and the wondrous noir nightmare of Blade
Runner. These were films which spoke to my evolving sensibilities, which
built on the childhood foundations that Star
Wars had helped to construct. Han Solo would always be one cool mofo, but
Rick Deckard was a complex, prickly, almost impenetrable cipher of a hero…which
was a lot more interesting a concept to contemplate as an adult. And if I
wanted to gaze back into my cinematic past, 2001:
A Space Odyssey proved to be a far richer formative experience to mull
over. Seeing the last half of that film on television as an 8 year-old blew my
mind, opening up neural pathways that I might not have understood at the time,
but which I knew would expand my view of existence for a lifetime to come.

2001 is a key point
of comparison, because Star Wars
stands as its mirror image in the canon. Kubrick’s vision of outer space gleams
with a pristine beauty, an almost sterile sheen that makes HAL’s crackup almost
a defiant strike against staid perfection. The much-lauded appeal of Lucas’s
vision was in giving his space odyssey a lived-in feel (a concept that Alien developed even further two years
later), imbuing the proceedings with a working class appeal that definitely
aided its connection with a mass audience. Say what you will about his
subsequent career, but with the original trilogy he took a lifetime of
influences both high and low art (from classic serials to Kurosawa) and blended
them into a filmic mixture of great pop art, a cinematic time machine about a
futuristic past that in some small way introduced generations to a dramatic
history that they might not otherwise have glommed onto. But for as much as 2001 and Star Wars both center around a mystery, the latter film’s Force is
an enigma that’s easily handled. The philosophical questions posed by Kubrick
and Clarke are something quite more slippery.

I was reminded quite a bit of
Kubrick and effects wizard Douglas Trumbull’s handling of their vision of space
while watching The Force Awakens. The
irony of Lucas’s wild success with his space opera is that it gave him the
clout to make the prequels, films that were so in thrall to the siren song of
technology that they often resembled the stereotypical image that many have of 2001: beautifully sterile in a manner so
calculated as to drain the emotion and fire out of the fictional world it
represents. J.J. Abrams can be a somewhat problematic, inconsistent director,
but this new film finds him excelling in crafting a world that feels just the opposite
of sterile, a fully realized stage environment on which his characters play out
their dramas (he achieved similar success in the Spielbergian Super 8.) As Lev Grossman accurately
notes in a recent Time profile of the
film, this is a world in which the ships are encrusted with dirt and wear, in
which the costumes are those of people who have lived in them for some time.
And Abrams’s dedication to practical effects work not only aids in making Force Awakens feel like a direct
continuation of the original trilogy’s Lucasfilm house style, but also makes it
a remarkably tactile experience in a modern blockbuster landscape that is so
heavily reliant on the tricky CGI dream machine. It makes the numerous flight
action sequences a thrilling counterpoint to the ground-based activity. But as
fun as these scenes are, they also lack the distinct sense of awe and grandeur
that 2001 so ably captured, and which
Interstellar recently replicated
(yeah, I’m beating the old dead horse of awe again….I’ll probably be having
that subject inscribed on my gravestone some day.)

I’m not sure how much Abrams, Lawrence
Kasdan, and Michael Arndt intended it in their screenplay, but this tactile,
weathered aesthetic also bleeds into the main narrative threads, constructing a
thematic undercurrent that crafts a meta-commentary on the resurrection of the
series itself. The presence of Jakku as a giant junkyard for an AT-AT, a Star
Destroyer, and the Millenium Falcon among others, obviously serves as a
metaphor for the elephant graveyard of ideas that has been the resting place of
the franchise for ten years (more if you side with the prequel critics). And
much of the plot focuses on the revival of the Force as a real, tactile
concept; it takes the gravitas of Harrison Ford/Han Solo (because really, at
this point are they even separate characters?) to convince Rey and Finn that
even a cynic like him eventually learned that the transcendental magic of this
belief was true, that the legends were more than stories.

And in a film that was specifically
pre-sold as a return to a theoretical concept of what was right about the
series, Rey, Finn, Kylo Ren and others end up serving as stand-ins for the fan
culture that has env)eloped this filmic mythos. Kylo, in particular, literally
worships the crumbled helmet of Darth Vader like the biggest cosplay fanboy in
the universe. Sure, he also happens to be Vadar’s grandson, but the care with
which he assembles his persona in tribute to his dead ancestor mirrors the fetishistic
delight and dedication that so much of the Star
Wars fandom has applied to it. Indeed, Vader couldn’t quite kill Han, Luke,
or Leia, but Kylo can do him one better in his Vader 2.0 costume (which,
granted, is also a nice inversion of Luke defeating his father in Jedi.)

All of this meta-commentary,
intentional or not, also brings up the matter of the devotion to fan service
that Abrams promised from the outset, a promise that has already met with some
critical derision. The main beats of the plot echo those of the first Star Wars almost to a tee, which poses
the question of how much of this tactic serves as thematic observation on
history’s cyclical nature and how much as salve to the fans left
disenfranchised by the prequels. It also poses the question of the nature of
said fandom in general. I admire the verve with which some of my friends pursue
their deep passions for Star Wars
culture in all its forms (the conventions, the massive product tie-ins, the
side stories and franchises), but I also sometimes feel like this fanbase in
particular is one of the most retrograde in popular culture. That feeling of
satisfaction I had upon Jedi’s
conclusion has lasted with me through adulthood. I understand that those films
were of another time, that Star Wars
was a breath of pulpy, yet fresh air in a static science fiction world and a
late-‘70s, post-Watergate culture in search of a Manichean moral clarity. The
rabid desire amongst some of the fans to recapture that feeling, to do it the
(ahem) right way again sometimes evokes the image of millions of Jay Gatsbys
reaching out to the green Jedi light across the bay. But you can’t relive the
past, old sports.

Is this all necessarily a bad
thing? Probably not. After all, we’re talking about a space opera that has
brought multiple generations together in ways that should be a welcome
development in our increasingly fractured culture. The TLDR version of this
essay would state that yeah, I enjoyed The
Force Awakens. Once Han and Chewie enter the fray, I had about ten minutes
where I thought that it was outstanding, before some of the creakiness and
predictability took over. Star Wars
established a band of reluctant heroes fighting against an established, veteran
evil; The Force Awakens plays in the
same speculative field, but the rookie heroes are opposed by what amounts to a
rookie villain leading a splinter force of the Empire. This film needed Ford,
Fisher, and Hamill to pass the torch to the newbies, but at times this gambit
feels like what would happen if Obi-Wan Kenobi was cloned and took over the
first film. There’s also the wildly evolving nature of the Hollywood star
system in play; even as relative unknowns in 1977, those leads carried a
gravitas borne out of their background in that decade’s artistic milieu. Try as
they might, it’s hard for Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, and Adam Driver to capture
that same feeling in an era in which stars have lost their mythical, distanced
status.

But hey, maybe that’s the point.
Maybe after all of the hype, and discussion, and debate over the legacy of this
sci-fi franchise, this is a Star Wars
tailored for the Millenial fans who, much like the young’uns in Force Awakens, heard their ancestors
speak in hushed tones about the magic they experienced back in 1977, or 1980,
or 1983. Maybe the main purpose of this film is to prove that the magic can
still be conjured, even if it’s more a simulacrum of something that, in its
original form, is long gone. For better and/or for worse, Star Wars beats us on against the current, bearing us back
ceaselessly into a galaxy and a society far, far, away.